Kimiraikkonen

Okay, so it wasn't a championship-level international stage, but just the same, Kimi Raikkonen has won his first rally. The event in question, called Rallye Vosgien, forms part of the French national series, and was contested by Kimi's Citroën Junior Team as practice ahead of the WRC Rally of France.

Contract negotiations in Formula One always come down to a wild card or two. And though we're barely halfway through the current championship, for the coming season, that wild card appears to belong to Kimi Raikkonen.

Michael Schumacher's triumphant comeback has been anything but. The seven-time world champion has been consistently outpaced by his junior team-mate Nico Rosberg, who most recently scored a podium finish at this past weekend's British Grand Prix while Schumi could manage no better than ninth. The question on everyone's minds, then, has been whether he'll stay for another season.

With Robert Kubica's contract up for renewal at the end of this season, speculation has been rampant around the F1 paddock as to where he'll end up next. The highly rated Polish driver debuted with BMW-Sauber in 2006 after winning the Formula Renault 3.5 title the year before, and went on to land as high as fourth place in the drivers' standings two years later. This season the Pole switched to Renault and is sitting in sixth place so far after a couple of notable podium finishes. Reports now in

Every F1 season has its wild cards, but in his typical style, few have proven as wild as Kimi Raikkonen. When Ferrari cut his contract short at the end of last season, the 2007 world champion – who came within spitting distance of stealing the title in 2003 and 2005 too – shocked the motor racing world when he simply packed his helmet and switched disciplines to the World Rally Championship.

Kimi Räikkönen is now a WRC driver. The Flying Finn will pilot one of two Citroën CR4 Junior Team cars with Kaj Lindström as his co-driver. It's been in the works for a while, and from the sounds of it, no one appears to have any doubts that Raikkonen will do well there. Team boss Olivier Quesnel rates the ex-Ferrari pilot highly, saying, "What he did there in a S2000 was amazing," when speaking of Kimi's run in an Abarth in a Finnish rally earlier this year.

It used to be that a racing driver would pick his form of motorsport at the beginning of his career and stick with it for the duration. Sure, there have been a few notable exceptions – especially among the Finns – but these days, it seems as if the exceptions are gaining on the norm. F1 drivers like Juan Pablo Montoya are moving to NASCAR, WRC aces like Sebastien Loeb and MotoGP champs like Valentio Rossi are trying their hand at F1, while F1 champs like Michael Schumacher are checki

The times they are a-changin' in Maranello. As if the departures of Michael Schumacher, Ross Brawn and Jean Todt over the past few years wasn't enough to shake things up for the Scuderia, a new round of change-ups is looming on the horizon.

If you scoffed at the notion that unionized auto workers were being paid not to work, you're going to love this one: According to reports emerging from Europe, Kimi Raikkonen could stand to make more money next year if he doesn't race than if he does.

digg_url = 'http://digg.com/motorsport/Official_Fernando_Alonso_Signs_With_Ferrari_F1_For_3_Years'; In a deal that seems to have been years in the making, Ferrari has finally made an official announcement: Fernando Alonso will be driving for the Prancing Horse in 2010. Rumors of Alonso going to the team from Maranello started back during the Spaniard's first stint with Renault, but circumstances with driver lineups didn't allow for it. Instead, Alonso went to McLaren for one very unhappy seaso

Apparently, the long-rumored Fernando Alonso to Ferrari announcement is now all but official. According to a report from the BBC, the 28-year-old driver has signed a two-year contract with options to extend that will earn the Spaniard a tidy salary of roughly 19 to 25 million euros ($27 to $36 million) per year.

According to British newspaper the Mirror, Kimi Raikkonen could be driving for McLaren next year. The Iceman drove for Ron Dennis' outfit from 2002 to 2006 and scored plenty of victories but couldn't get the World Championship. Then he left for Ferrari in 2007 where he promptly won the World Championship the first year.

Rumors are heating up that Ferrari Formula One driver Kimi Räikkönen will walk away from the grand prix circus at the end of the 2009 season. If the 2007 World Champion does quit, it would free up his seat for two-time champion Fernando Alonso. You'll recall that there's been talk of Alonso making the jump to Ferrari since well before his single unhappy season at McLaren. However, the circumstances have never quite worked out for him.

Ferrari announced during the first practice day of this weekend's Monza GP that Kimi Raikkonen's contract has been extended by one year. This mean's he's locked into service with the scuderia until the end of 2010, which is the same time Felipe Massa's contract runs out. Terms of the extension weren't disclosed, but the fact that Ferrari re-signed the Iceman means they aren't nearly as worried about his recent form as the rest of the paddock appears to be. It also means that Fernando Alonso can

Upsets, upsets and more upsets. The Formula One racing world thought it had put the politics between Ferrari and McLaren to rest, but the controversy between the two front-running teams reared its ugly head once more at this past weekend's Belgian Grand Prix at Spa. Follow the jump to read how the weekend's events unfolded, and how the race results were turned on its head once again.